Marcel Scherf

I have spent some time in a cross functional team over the last year and noticed that in order to get stuff done you need to have everyone on the same page all the time. There needs to be, at least in my mind, some consensus on what the deeper meaning, goal and value of the whole project is. Of course you could say “It’s you job and you do what you are supposed to do, that’s what you get paid for after all” but in this day and age many people want something more out of a job than just the paycheck. There is the notion of mastering something and learning new interesting things along the way. Contributing your own ideas and executing on them. We want to “ownership” of the the things we do and not be just a small cog in the wheel.

Also you need alot of glue services like wikis, todo lists and so on to keep everyone in the loop and to cooperate well. A huge problem is collecting all the ideas in peoples heads, spreading them, iterating on them and making them come true in some shape or form. Usually what you will find is that project teams will use all sorts of softwares and services to build a good enough environment to get all the conditions right to be successful and effective. To make the right decisions and to keep everybody aligned with the greater picture.

The ting is: this is all very nice and it works good enough for most teams, but to be honest all that management-, collaboration- and productivity services are mostly kind of boring. There is no place where people can virtually hang out and kick around ideas. If you have a brilliant idea and you are not in the position to code it yourself, your idea will die a horrible death going through all the instances and layers of management. If you are lucky your idea will come out alive, but you can’t even recognize your baby anymore because committees have deluted your original vision. So if you want your idea to succeed you should go covert and pick some people to just do it. If you fail you can always apologize later. But chances are that, if your idea is really that good, your initiative will be highly appriciated.

I assume that most companies want people who think and take the initiative. If you fail sometimes that’s part of the deal. At least you and your company have learned something. So every time you do a project or task you should have learned something new or improved your skills in some way. Well, if you are a gamer this should sound familiar, level up! But most of the timethere is no reward – no instant gratification like in games. Why is that? Would it not be nice to be rewarded on your quest to mastery?

Would it not be fun, if work was actually fun? I have been interested in gaming and game mechanics for some time now and there is now a huuuge trend implementing game mechanics in everything. With the rise of games on social networks and mobile devices people are now used to rewards for their actions. The trend is swapping into mainstream and there is not sign of slowing down. Of course people will eventually get tired of the same old same old points mechanics, but when done right I am convinced that these kind of mechanics can go a long way with increasing productivity and overall fun at the workplace and dealing with projects in general.

If you are interested in this kind of thing I can point you to some great talks on the subject in general:

• Ted Talk: Jane McGonigal – Gaming can make a better world
• Dice Conference: Jesse Schell – Design out of the box
• Google TechTalk: Amy Jo Kim – Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software

There are also very interesting presentations on slideshare:

• Sebastian Deterding – Just add points?
• Holger Dieterich – What can we learn from games?

What do you think? Could your projects be more fun? Do you invent games in your workplace?

Over the last few years I have been posting all the interesting stuff I find and my thoughts on facebook.com. But considering the lastest facebook privacy fuckup and general behavior towards their users got me thinking. So I decided to cut down on all social networking activity.

From now on I will post many of the stuff that I posted on facebook here. So expect a loads of new posts

If you like you can also follow me on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/marcelscherf and you can also join my private mailing list: http://eepurl.com/gbxt

5 Fundamental game mechanics

These five game mechanics are not all the fundamental game mechanics. They are five game mechanics that are particular useful for social software and web services. They’re useful, they’re low hanging fruit, they’re applicable. There’s a lot more sophisticated things you can do, but these five are a great place to start.

Points

The most fundamental thing that makes something seem like a game is points. People look at their Twitter followers and they see points. People look at the number of their friends and they see points. Anything that looks like points, smells like points, quacks like points is going to be points. Once you’ve got points you can do leader boards, if you choose. That’s why there’s “mayor” of Foursquare, because of points. Once you’ve got points, you can also do levels.
Collecting

The game mechanic of collecting is very main stream. Very familiar to people. You amass collectors. There’s baseball cards. There’s trading cards. There are Beanie Babies. There fans you’ve collected from your trip around the world. A lot of people are collectors. Badges are a good example of that. Badges tap into a collecting mechanic. Badges are interesting when there’s more to earn. You earn one badge, well there’s more. What does it mean to complete a set? If you can frame your badges as sets that you can complete, boom, you just tapped into the collecting mechanics.

Feedback

Feedback is not just games, of course. Feedback is good software design. Feedback is good user interaction design. But, games are particular good at feedback. And that’s why I consider it a game mechanic. If you’re ever played any games like Rock Band or Karaoke Revolution or Guitar Hero, those games gives you feedback on so many levels about what you’re doing they actually makes you better at your skill. And that’s what feedback fundamental does. It keeps you on the road to mastery. It tells you if you’re on the right track. It helps you get better like a great coach. That’s what great feedback does. The better your feedback the more it’s going to feel like a game and an engrossing system.

Exchanges

Taking turns — or exchanges is the shorthand I use for that. Playing chess is taking turns. Having a conversation is taking turns. Many games have this back and forth of taking turns. Tit for tat is taking turns. Giving and receiving a gift is taking turns. This taps into this very fundamental human engagement of, “its my turn, it’s your turn, it’s my turn, it’s your turn…” which is one of the most basic game mechanics we learn as kids, wait your turn. And you can tap into that. Humans are very familiar with what a conversation feels like, and if your system feels like a conversation. Feels like taking turns, you’re going to draw people in.
Cutomization

It can be customizing your character, like a World of Warcraft. Or blinging-out your profile on MySpace. Those are both great examples of customization. Any time you have a rich profile you can decorate….All that kind of customization was really pioneered by games. And thinking about how to allow people to customize their experience is much more what’s traditionally been in the gamer dynamic. Gamers customize their interfaces, customize their characters, etc. Now, what we’re seeing is that style of customizing both your identity and your environment is creeping into more everyday activities.

Make sure to checkout the excellent interview on Mixergy.com

The Urlaub is near. Only one day to go

Ich suche eine digitale Spiegelreflex. Kann jemand was empfehlen. Ich tendiere in Richtung Canon EOS 500D oder 450D

BREAKING NEWS: Gmail is no longer in beta!!!

okay…. finally

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2230148&dest=-1]

And I took some notes. A larger post will follow here and on the imedo devblog
Overall it was fun. Good presentations, but the rooms were to small and there were not enough powerplugs.

Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow I will be attending RailsWayCon 2009 in Berlin

I started a new project some weeks ago: Nightflyz – Party Guide Wordwide
If you want to trade links please leave a comment.